[EM] STV's rejection: it's "not a defect, it's a feature!"

[Bart Ingles]

Craig Carey wrote:
> 
> [...]
> To restate that: even when there is one winner only, the Approval
>   Voting method gives a lot more power to groups of voters that use a
>   lot of preferences, as compared to those that use one preference.

Not really -- even if an individual votes for many candidates, only one
of those votes can count toward the eventual winner.


> It was correct to say a paper (voter) can only have the power to undo
>   1.0 of a vote by any other particular person. But so what?, when that
>   voter is part of a group that has 10 times the power _per member_
>   of another particular group. How could the argument that each person
>   has the same power as another be correct when group A that casts X
>   approval sub-votes has many times the power of another group.

If group (A) that has 10x the power _per_member_ of another group (B),
that is the same as saying that an individual from group A has 10x the
power of an individual from group B.  But that can't be true, since the
individual from group B can always cancel the vote of the individual
from group A.

> 
> "I had to vote today too. Tell us why you are
>   not exercising for the good of your party, your full powers under the
>   new Approval Voting system?. You said you were voting for yourself,
>   and that is not, is it sir, the best that can be done to cause
>   candidate C to lose if you lose.". What would an A.V. advocate
>   recommend in a circumstance like this?   [...]

Under AV, the candidate would always vote for him/herself, but may also
vote for other candidates.  Under STV, the candidate could conceivably
be in a position where it is best not to vote for himself at all! 
Consider the following:

7 abcd
6 bacd
5 cbad
3 dcba

Suppose the bottom group of voters consists of the candidate d, along
with his wife and mistress.  By voting for himself, he insures that
archrival a wins.

If instead he (along with his significant others) reverses his entire
preference order to that of the archrival's group (abcd), b wins, a
slight improvement.  The bottom group not only has less power than the
first, it actually has *negative* power!  What would an STV advocate
recommend in a circumstance like this?